[CAUT] d minor

[Susan Kline]

At 06:31 PM 2/15/2005 -0700, you wrote:
>It's more
>psychological than physical IMO, but there's no question it seems to help
>(from many years of accompanying).

Hi, Fred

It _does_ help. Just how it helps is another question. I think that
possibly a string player will tune the A by making a good fifth from the
D. Just why the F natural helps ... well ... I'm not sure, except that
it gives flavor and helps one's ear to retain the pitch of the chord.
Perhaps it's sort of like how shading with a different color just to
one side will bring out a three dimensional quality in lettering, even
though it is printed in two dimensions.

I am fairly sure that although an open A string will beat against a
piano A when it is out of tune, that the string player is not really
paying attention to the beats, as much as the intonation, which
would be discerned by the width of the interval. Weird, but that's
what I remember doing, from the era before I learned to tune pianos.

It is also possible that not all string players are perfectly
self-aware when tuning A. They match the pitch, more or less well,
but possibly most do not analyze just what means they use.

The pattern I remember getting from pianists is A3, followed by D3,
and then the F3 (natural), with all three notes being held. The A
would be the loudest.

Susan